The ghouls and spectres will soon be gathering… here in Transylvania must be the beating heart of Hallowe’en, and here are the images to prove it. Whaaahaahaahaa… Wrap up warm tonight, against the deadly touch of the freezing wind whips up your trouser legs and makes every hair bristle in terror. Is that the wind howling, or the eldritch shriek of the dead, screeching to be let out of purgatory?

Encroaching doom appears as a hellish sunset over Piatra Craiului

Vlad III, Voivoide of Wallachia, known forever as the Impaler Vlad Tepes, watching over his home town of Sighisoara

A Transylvanian place to Rest In Peace…

The Hand of Glory (or a chicken’s foot)

Modern-day impaling: the Thing on the Spike (NB dripping blood) in Bucharest

Ancient cross below Bran Castle, with power symbols and runic writing

The house in Sighisoara where Vlad Tepes, Vlad III, Dracula, was born

“Golden lads and lasses must, like chimney sweepers, come to dust.” None of us gets out of here alive… (stone carving in the Gothic Cathedral, Sibiu)

A stake in Transylvania….

Bran Castle’s weapons of death

But not all of us will be outside watching witches whizz overhead in the black night sky….

Some of us don’t give a rat’s right knacker about the Undead, enjoying a dreamless snooze in front of the fire